SCHOOL CHILDREN LEARN TO QUESTION
CORPORATIONS ON THEIR SUSTAINABILITY

20/09/02 Rosie Walford

Towards the end of their final year, a class
of teenage schoolgirls in miniskirted uniforms
strode into the factory of Shiseido, Japan's
largest cosmetics company. Corporate chemists,
managers and the Chief Engineer ushered the
young girls into the boardroom with deep bows.

Last year, a class had scrutinised the
factory's production of an olive-oil based
moisturiser, from ingredients to packaging.
Finding that during oil extraction, 80% of olive
biomass goes to waste, the girls had searched
out alternatives on the internet. They
discovered Israelis burning olive stones to
potash - an ingredient of soap. Couldn't such
processes make the local product less wasteful,
more sustainable, they had asked in formal
presentations back to the board. This year, the
girls were looking at the factory's current
practices on waste.

While many corporations successfully channel
youthful attention to their brands, nurturing
uncritical loyalties, inAsia, some
schoolchildren are forming more intelligent
relationships with companies. Through Projects
International, an initiative created by British
and Canadian educationalists at EON foundation,
the next generation interact with corporations
and grow conversant with environmental
responsibility from an early age.

The framework for sustainability projects in
local companies was piloted in Mukdaharn, N.
Thailand. The idea was to develop a
sustainability module for
English-as-a-foreign-Language teaching, since
then a universal structure could be taught
worldwide. Under EON guidance, ordinary Thai
village teachers briefed children on the
principles of sustainable production cycles.
Soon a class of 16 year-olds were let loose on
the backparts of the nearest five-star hotel,
auditing emissions, waste, resource consumption
and more.

The set-up was collaborative - not looking to
criticise the hotel but encouraging children to
find ways it might be more sustainable. Teachers
and students sailed together into uncharted
territory, researching areas where a particular
-sometimes technical - business practice could
maybe improve.

After much browsing and e-mail dialogue with
companies and universities internationally, they
presented actionplans - in English - to the
hotel management and published findings through
the internet. Such was the project's success in
advancing the use of English that across 70
states of Thailand, English language resource
centres are now disseminating the Project
International methodology.

The realism of the projectwork seems to
captivate students. In Kamakura Jogakuin Girls'
Highschool, (KamaJo),twenty one students attend
the bi-weekly English project voluntarily. The
buzz comes from 'quizzing older officials on
technical questions', said one girl, from
'realising that I myself can have innovative
ideas' and 'corresponding with real professors
and companies abroad,' said others. The process
of pursuing an agenda with the outside, adult
world, seems to have its own rewards.

This is just as well, for the
schoolchildrens' proposals for environmental
practice, according to Shiseido, can be
'uneconomic' or simply - like the extraction of
olive ingredients - 'beyond the company's
influence'. So this year's KamaJo students visit
the factory with less focus on improving the
company's behaviour. Instead they seek ways to
adapt the environmental measures they are shown
in the factory into ideas they might implement
at home or school.

The students are designing a mini-version of
the factory's thirtyseven-way waste sorting for
their canteen. They've also decided to emulate
Shiseido's policy of environmental
awareness-building among staff. They mounted an
'environment fair' for schoolmates too junior
for Projects International, illustrating pleas
to re-use grey water, to not flush twice, and
planting seedlings in old plastic lemonade
bottles.

The children work closely with the corporate,
asking questions and making presentations to
management as before. But, conveniently for
Shiseido, they take the factory's environmental
measures as gold-standards to follow, rather
than as starting points to be improved upon. The
pupils are, nonetheless, highly motivated by
inventing measures they themselves can take.

Projects International can certainly be easy
corporate PR: environmentally confident
companies get to showcase their good practices
in the heart of the local community - to
impressionable minds. Subject to rather inexpert
scrutiny, they receive suggestions they are free
and able to refute any way they choose. And in
return for relatively little company time, they
are seen publicly to be investing in progressive
education for local children.

But a year of interacting with a factory on
its sustainability certainly sensitises children
to big issues. ,19, an ex-KamaJo student, is now
studying Environmental Law in Tokyo. The
Shiseido experience sparked off a life-interest
she would not have considered. "My parents
didn't believe in the ideal of zero emissions
when I came home from class. But I saw how
businesses strongly affect the environment, and
that there are laws, which I thought must be the
most powerful way to protect the
environment . Now I realise companies seek
to evade them wherever possible" she added
wryly.

The 1992 Earth Summit called for education
which leads to 'an informed and involved global
citizenry with the creative problem-solving
skills, scientific and social literacy to engage
in responsible individual and cooperative
actions'. Working as it does, through
English-as-Foreign-Language teachers, Projects
International is one of themost transferable,
practical approaches yet. And with business
increasingly dominating global sustainability,
there's much to be said for students like Ikuko
learning to think autonomously about the
behaviour of corporations, not only to consume
their brands.